Evidence based medicine and mobbing]

The phenomenon of the physical, moral or psychical violence in the working environment, variously indicated as "mobbing", "workplace bullying" or "workplace harassment", is to date object of numerous studies, mostly of epidemiological type, which are yet to clear, in a sufficient way, the aspects of that phenomenon, the possible causes, risk factors, constituent characteristics and consequences. Our search, a systematic review of the existing studies in literature and a meta-analysis of the jobs chosen to such scope, has shown that only a small percentage of the researches conducted on the topic is represented from studies that collected original information on the subject. The results of the meta-analysis show that in the category of the mobbed workers the psychosomatic disturbs, stress, and anxiety are greater than in the group of controls and that the perception of the surrounding environment is more negative in the victims of mobbing compared with the not mobbed workers. The value of such results is reduced by the characteristics and the heterogeneity of the studies.